


the art of surrendering to time and place

by palmviolet



Series: prompt fills [10]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, High School Jopper, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Prompt Fill, Sharing a Bed, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:28:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24132088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palmviolet/pseuds/palmviolet
Summary: cafuné(portuguese, n.) - the act of tenderly running one’s fingers through someone’s hair+latibule(n.) - a hiding place; a place of safety and comfort// lonnie is an ass, and joyce turns to hopper for help. hopper wants what he can’t have.
Relationships: Joyce Byers/Jim "Chief" Hopper, referenced Joyce Byers/Lonnie Byers
Series: prompt fills [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1437433
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	the art of surrendering to time and place

**Author's Note:**

> written for an anonymous prompt on tumblr, of the two words in the summary. 
> 
> while reading, i advise listening to can’t nobody love you by solomon burke, which is the song hop listens to at the end. it was released in 1964; this is set in 1965. 
> 
> title from the same poem as the epigraph.

’And besides, what’s another bruise? 

What’s a bruise? What’s a bruise? What’s a blue moon bruise 

to do but pull young blood to and fro like the tide? What’s a bruise

but a testament to the sharp art of surrendering to time and place?’

from _the stopped clock_ by **amber dawn**

“Joyce? Are you okay?”

This is a stupid question. Joyce is facing him across his window-sill, eyes huge and shining in the dark. Her hands are trembling, and it’s a wonder she made the climb up the bare, damaged trellis. After considering her for a moment - the way she’s shivering in the cold - he curses his own stupidity and tugs her inside. Her arms are bare and cold to the touch. 

“I know I shouldn’t be here, but…”

He gives her a look, and throws himself back on his bed with his hands pillowed under his head. “So, how can I help you, Horowitz?”

She sits down on his bed without answering, and he bites his lip. She’s wearing clothes that are completely inappropriate for the February weather – a black high-necked top that leaves a teasing strip of pale midriff bare, and the same short checked skirt that got her sent home from school a couple weeks ago, on account of it not reaching the floor when she knelt for the skirt check. Her legs are long and bare and it’s wonder she didn’t freeze out there, really, he thinks as he tries not to stare. 

“My eyes are up here, you know.” There’s amusement in her voice but when he meets her eyes they’re red and puffy, and her makeup is smeared. His stomach sinks to his toes. 

“What happened?” Dread bleeds into his voice without him meaning it to and he sees her stiffen. 

“Nothing- nothing _happened._ I can’t just come and see you?”

“You could, but you haven’t for like three months now, so…”

She bites her lip. She’s wearing red lipstick. “I’m sorry, Hop. I’ve just been busy with school, and-” He knows what she was going to say. Knows the name _Lonnie_ is hanging off her tongue, waiting to fall, but he doesn’t want to hear it. Seems she doesn’t either. “Forgive me?” She looks at him with those massive eyes, and he’s never been able to say no to her. He takes her offered hand and traces his thumb over her palm. Her skin is cold as ice.

“What happened? It’s sub-freezing out there, where’s your coat?”

She looks at him and then looks away, and he can tell the same name is on her lips. This time, she lets it fall. “I fought with Lonnie. He took his jacket back, just to spite me. It was my fault, I was stupid enough to wear it to his place when I knew he was mad at me…”

“And why was he mad at you?” Hopper tries to keep his voice even. He’s not sure he succeeds.

“I was being dumb, I didn’t like him hanging out with Sandy all the time when he told me not to-”

“Told you not to what?”

Joyce averts her eyes and picks at a loose thread on her skirt, though she doesn’t let go of his hand. “To hang out with you- and Benny, and Danny, and Frank, and any boy, really, so I thought it wasn’t such a big deal to stop him going around with Sandy when they used to date, and I’ve never dated you _or_ Benny so I thought...”

She trails off, looking at him stricken, and he becomes aware that his eyes have narrowed and his face has twisted into something ugly. With an effort, he softens his expression. “And the asshole didn’t like that, I’m guessing.”

“No. He didn’t.” She sniffs and it occurs to him that she’s going to cry again. She’s only ever cried in front of him twice, and it makes him shift uncomfortably. He sits up a little. “We were meant to go to the drive-in tonight, but he was in such a bad mood and I told him I’d just go home and study instead, but then he started shouting that-” She stops. “You don’t wanna hear this.”

She’s right; he doesn’t want to hear this. Part of him thinks, _you’re dating Lonnie goddamn Byers, Joyce, what did you expect?_ Lonnie Byers: twenty-two year old high school dropout, part-time mechanic and full-time dickwad. He has a leather jacket but no motorbike to go with it, but apparently this is enough to make the girls - including Joyce - drool. He doesn’t know what she sees in him. 

But he feels sorry for her. And she won’t like that, he knows, but he can’t help it. Her smeary mascara, her slender frame still shivering. He leans down and grabs his sweatshirt from where he threw it on the floor a few hours ago, and faintly shoves it at her. Gratefully she accepts it, and the blue material swallows her up. She looks adorable. But he doesn’t say anything, just tugs her closer by their still-entwined hands. “C’mere,” he mumbles, and they wind up with her head pillowed on his chest and her knees drawn up next to his. “I’m sorry he’s such a dick.”

He feels her sigh. She smells like him, because of the sweatshirt, but also of something unfamiliar. Smoke and motor oil. His jaw tightens- but then she burrows closer to him, moving her head so it’s pillowed in his lap. “You’re warm,” she says, almost sleepily, and without thinking his fingers move to curl gently in her hair. He’s always loved her hair. It’s shorter than it used to be, cut stylishly around her chin, though it’s too naturally curly to form the perfect flick that most of the girls are sporting. It’s black, too - he remembers when she first dyed it, six months ago now, and Chrissy tried to get everyone calling her a witch but it never really caught on because Joyce looks _great_ like this and everyone knows it, Chrissy included. 

She sighs again as he runs his fingers through her hair. In doing so he exposes her neck and he sees, with a sick jolt, the purple blossom of a fresh hickey. It’s this that makes him ask a little sadistically, “Why did you come here, Joyce?”

He feels her tense up, but she doesn’t move. He’s glad she doesn’t move. “My keys are in Lonnie’s jacket,” and it sounds like a guilty confession. “If I woke my dad up trying to get back into the house…”

He traces circles on her scalp absently, even as his chest tightens with fury. Fury that Lonnie would let her go out into the night alone with no coat and nowhere to go; fury that her dad scares her enough that she has nowhere to go. “He just let you go off without them?”

She turns and looks at him. It’s sudden enough that he doesn’t have the chance to move his hand, and his fingers brush her cheek. “I told him I needed my keys, and he said I could come get them in the morning. We’re not... _done._ He’ll make it up to me.”

“Seriously? Joyce, he’s trouble. He’s no good.”

“What are you, my mom?” she scoffs, and then seems to freeze at what she just said. Joyce’s mom died three years ago, he remembers. It was right about the time she started skipping class and smoking under the bleachers with him instead. “I’m fine, Hop. I can handle myself. And him.”

He sighs down at her. “I know you can. I know you can.” She’s beaten him; there’s nowhere he can go from here. He can’t press the issue, because then he’ll be the dick. “But you coulda gone to Cindy’s, or Liz’s.”

“I could’ve,” she whispers. “But I didn’t. I came here.” She turns back, pressing her cheek against his denim-clad thigh. His fingers find her hair again. Pointedly he avoids looking at the hickey. “I feel safe around you.”

He’s not even sure she meant him to hear it, but it fills him with warmth anyway. God, but doesn’t that mean a lot? Doesn’t that mean everything? He doesn’t respond, just lets it sit there for a moment. Lets it fill up the space around them until he feels like he’s floating in it. She’s so warm and soft against him, so small. His other arm drapes over her waist and holds her there, secure. _Safe._

“Can I stay here, tonight? I’ll go back to Lonnie’s before your dad wakes up, I just-”

“‘Course,” he says. He has a hard time saying no to her anyway, but now? After she’s dropped this little revelation that has latched on somewhere beneath his ribcage? “Dad has an early shift tomorrow, you don’t have to go. I can make us breakfast.”

He feels, rather than hears, her laughter. “You and I both know you can’t cook for shit.”

“Hey, I can butter some toast. Pretty hard to screw that up.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.” She sits up and immediately he misses her slight, warm weight. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

He raises his eyebrows. “No way. That floor is very uncomfortable, I can tell you that for free. I know, I’ve passed out on it enough times.”

“Should I be concerned?” she smirks, but seems to concede the point. He gives her a pair of sweatpants - also massive on her - and she uses water from the glass on his nightstand and a tissue to wipe away her red lipstick and smeared eyeliner. It works for the most part but there’s still a smudge of pink around her lips when she turns around, and he swallows. She looks hazy and kissable. But he won’t kiss her. He’s not stupid.

Then she lies down beside him, under the covers, and god if this isn’t a moment he’ll treasure forever. A moment he’ll fold up like a love note, and tuck into his shirt pocket over his heart. He thinks about the morning, about making her breakfast, listening to Solomon Burke on the radio and dancing along. Holding her hand the whole time, making her laugh hard enough and long enough that she forgets all about going back to Lonnie, even for her keys. What does she need her keys for, really? She hates that tiny, dishevelled house on the edge of town. She hates her dad. 

“Thanks for this,” she whispers, when he’s turned the lights out. “Really. You saved my ass.”

“He shouldn’t treat you like that, Joyce,” he says, despite himself. “It’s not right.”

“I know.” Her voice is small. He feels her slender fingers curl around his own again - whether to reassure or to be reassured, he doesn’t know. All he knows is how nice it is, and how this moment won’t last. How once she’s eaten her breakfast she’ll be off somewhere, either to Lonnie or somewhere else, moving away from him like always. He’s never had her in his reach. This is the closest he’s ever come.

He stays awake for a long time, long after her breathing has evened out. But eventually he falls asleep, still holding her hand.

In the morning he wakes to an empty, cold bed, with a note - _thanks Hop, you’re a godsend_ \- and the absence of his sweater the only proof he has she was even here. He sighs. He shouldn’t have expected anything else, not really. He makes breakfast and listens to Solomon Burke anyway. The first song that comes on is a sad one.

Shoulda figured. 

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think <3


End file.
